Border Images Spark Outrage, Condemnation of Biden Policies

Images from the southern border have sparked outrage over the Biden administration's stance on immigration, with many critics accusing the President of breaking campaign promises and carrying over Trump-era enforcement policies. The images included U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers mounted on horseback chasing Haitian migrants near the Rio Grande in Texas were described as “horrific” by democratic lawmakers and led to a wave of condemnation and outcry.

One of the photographs depicted a mounted officer wielding the reins of his horse and using it to strike migrants in a whipping fashion. Vice President Kamala Harris quickly denounced the images as “horrible” and “deeply troubling,” noting that they invoked images of slavery and called for a full investigation. 

More than 10,000 migrants had been camped in the Rio Grande area, including many asylum seekers from Haiti. The administration has moved swiftly to deport many asylum seekers back to Haiti, where political instability and natural disasters have driven many to seek safety abroad. Following the deportations, the U.S. special envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, resigned, calling the deportations inhumane.

“The people of Haiti, mired in poverty, hostage to the terror, kidnappings, robberies, and massacres of armed gangs and suffering under a corrupt government with gang alliances, simply cannot support the forced infusion of thousands of returned migrants lacking food, shelter, and money without additional, avoidable human tragedy,” Foote said in his resignation letter.

The images have led many advocates to decry not only the use of mounted officers but also the systematic discrimination faced by black migrants coming to the United States. Haitian Bridge Alliance, a leading organization advocating on behalf of Haitian migrants, wrote a letter to the administration condemning not only the images but the continued deportation of Haitian migrants. 

“No Haitian should be subjected to expedited removal or reinstatement of removal given the lives at stake and the Biden administration’s own assessment of the dangerous conditions in Haiti.”

The letter included a list of immediate demands to address the crisis and was co-signed by dozens of other organizations. 

The treatment of Haitians at the border is just one of many issues that advocates pointed to in their criticism of the Biden administration, many of them believing that the President has not done enough to keep campaign promises to move towards a more humane immigration process. Chief among these complaints is the ongoing use of private detention facilities, as well as the continuing inhumane treatment of all migrants at the southern border. 

Meanwhile, the Biden administration's use of a Trump-era policy to exclude migrants at the border remains a source of contention and legal battles. On September 16th, a federal judge ruled that the administration had to stop using the controversial Title 42 public health order to remove migrants with children from the U.S.-Mexico Border quickly. The Judge granted a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, ruling that they were likely to succeed in their challenge to the use of the program. 

Title 42 led to at least 16,000 expulsions in the month of August alone, and many have cited the law as a disappointing continuation of the Trump-era policies by the Biden administration. The program allows border agents to expel migrants without allowing them to present a legal claim.

Advocates have argued that Title 42 was an illegal move by the Trump administration to deny migrants the right to seek lawful asylum in the United States. “President Biden should have ended this cruel and lawless policy long ago, and the court was correct to reject it today,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.

The judge in the case seemingly agreed, noting that the law seemed “likely unlawful” and also unnecessary “in view of the wide availability of testing, vaccines, and other minimization measures.”

The ruling was quickly appealed, resulting in a federal appellate court temporarily granting the Biden administration permission to continue using the law as a basis for expulsions. 

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said he was disappointed by the ruling. “Nothing stops the Biden administration from immediately repealing this horrific Trump-era policy,” he said. “If the administration is making the political calculation that if it acts inhumanely now, it can act more humanely later, that calculation is misguided and of little solace to the families that are being sent to Haiti or brutalized in Mexico right now.”

In September, former CDC officials wrote an open letter to the Biden administration condemning Title 42 as “scientifically baseless and politically motivated.” 

A press release on the letter noted that the Biden administration was continuing Trump’s policy of weaponizing public health against migrants. “Since the Trump administration first exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to implement this xenophobic policy in March 2020, public health experts have repeatedly objected to the policy’s specious public health justifications and recommended rational science-based measures to safely process asylum seekers and migrants at the border while promoting public health and upholding U.S. and international obligations to refugees.”

A senior State Department official joined the chorus of criticism on the use of Title 42. Harold Koh, the sole political appointee on the State Department’s legal team, penned a scathing resignation memo in which he called the use of Title 42 “illegal,” “inhumane,” and “not worthy of this Administration that I so strongly support.”

“I believe this Administration’s current implementation of the Title 42 authority continues to violate our legal obligation not to expel or return (“refouler”) individuals who fear persecution, death, or torture, especially migrants fleeing from Haiti,” the memo states. 

Koh joined advocates in arguing that the administration could do better, noting that “lawful, more humane alternatives plainly exist.”